‘Where are we going now?’
Charlie hesitated, looking across at the mainland again. Certainly they had to get off Hong Kong island, so Kowloon was the obvious choice: a lot of small, no-questions-asked places there. ‘The Americans have woken up everybody’ — Harry’s warning, on the way from the airport. So was Kowloon too obvious, like here at the Mandarin? Or safe enough? Before he could reply to the woman’s question, there was a sound at the door. Irena jumped, nervously, and as he opened it to Harry Lu, Charlie decided the man had taken a long time simply to settle a less-than-one-night occupancy bill.
‘All set,’ announced Lu.
For whom and for what, wondered Charlie. Pointedly, he said: ‘Where have you been?’
Lu looked directly at him, recognizing the suspicion. ‘Making calls, Charlie.’
‘To whom?’
‘Don’t, Charlie. There isn’t any reason,’ urged the other man.
Irena, a professional, detected the atmosphere and said: ‘What’s the problem?’
Both men ignored her. Charlie said: ‘I wouldn’t like there to be, Harry.’
‘I’m trusting you,’ reminded the man. ‘It’s got to go both ways.’
Lu was right, Charlie accepted: and he didn’t have any alternative anyway. Charlie never liked operating without at least one alternative. Preferably more. He repeated: To whom?’
Lu didn’t reply at once, conscious of Charlie’s refusal to meet him on the assurance. Then he said: ‘People: people very anxious to know where you are …’
The man finished speaking by turning to include Irena who said at once: ‘Something else has gone wrong, hasn’t it? Tell me!’
‘Nothing else has gone wrong!’ said Charlie, urgently, trying to quell the woman’s obvious rising anxiety.
‘So what is it between you?’ persisted the woman.
‘A misunderstanding,’ said Charlie. It had been stupid, allowing the exchange in front of her. Trying to rebuild a bridge with Lu, Charlie added: ‘My fault.’
Lu gave no response and Charlie decided the apology had come too late. The annoyance flushed through him, self-anger at his own stupidity: things were bad enough, without his making additional contributions to the fuck-up. ‘My mistake,’ he said again, directly and to the man alone this time.
‘We’ve got a deal?’ asked Lu.
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, who still hadn’t considered how to achieve — even if he could achieve — what Lu demanded.
‘Then I’ll keep my side of it,’ undertook the man.
‘Freelance!’ identified Irena, showing further expertise. Accusingly, to Charlie, she said: ‘You involved a freelance!’
‘I involved the best man,’ insisted Charlie. The whole bloody conversation was getting out of hand.
The uncertain doubt was obvious in Irena’s look. She said: ‘Yuri thought you were good,’ in a voice indicating that she didn’t agree with the assessment.
Irritated with the dispute — and not knowing how to continue it without further unsettling the woman — Charlie turned back to Lu and said: ‘So what do these people say?’
‘The Americans have arrived. In force. Military, too.’
Charlie recalled his reflection on the journey from the airport: it looked as if a military as well as a civilian aircraft departure was going to be difficult, without some sort of pitched battle. He said: ‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know: not yet.’ Lu smiled, fleetingly, and said: ‘I will, of course.’
‘Hope you find them before they find us,’ said Charlie, sincerely. He gestured around the hotel room and said: ‘Where, after this?’
Lu nodded across the waterway, towards the mainland. ‘It’s got to be Kowloon, hasn’t it?’
Obvious, thought Charlie again. He said: ‘What about Macao?’
Lu frowned. Surprise? Or annoyance at a change to an already-conceived arrangement? wondered Charlie.
‘It’s small,’ argued Lu.
‘That’s the problem: everywhere’s small and easily covered,’ said Charlie. ‘But it’s an alternative, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Lu, still reluctant.
‘We’ll make it Macao,’ decided Charlie. To the woman, he said: ‘Let’s go.’
At the doorway she stopped, looking directly at him. She said: ‘You lied. Everything has gone wrong. I know it has.’
Olga Balan used an Australian passport — describing her as a single woman named Hebditch — and landed in Hong Kong on the gritty-eyed dawn arrival flight which was the first available, and which had originated in Hawaii, with a Tokyo stop-over. Not that it would have been possible for her to have slept, had she tried. She knew she was right, in telling Yuri they were trapped. They were trapped and she felt trapped. Unless she killed Irena. Why couldn’t Yuri have understood, when she said she was frightened! But then how could he know? No one knew. Only her.
Chapter Twenty
Charlie fought against the light-headedness of fatigue, trying to calculate the last time he’d properly slept and abandoning the exercise because it was an intrusion and there were enough intrusions already. At least Irena Kozlov was safely resting now. He hoped. Like he hoped so much else.
It was omens time and certainly luck had been following them with the hydrofoil. They’d managed to catch the last one to the Portugese colony, changed the harbour cab for another once they reached the tiny township and used a third to cross the sweeping bridge over the Pearl River to the Hyatt. Where he’d spent exactly five minutes in his own room, after settling Irena, before moving again. Not strictly true. There’d been the further fifteen minutes in the bar with Harry, trying to restore things between them and drinking the Scotch he’d needed at the time but now wished he hadn’t had, because it was contributing to his tiredness. Had he buggered things up with Harry? Certainly with the suspicion in front of Irena, but alone, in the bar, the man had appeared to relax: actually showed photographs of his Chinese wife whose name translated to Dawn Rising and their child, a five-year-old girl called Open Flower. Not just relaxing, Charlie accepted. It had been necessary for the man to introduce his family, so there would be no mistakes about the entry documents required. Wrong to read too much into it then.
Charlie sighed, staring through the water-flecked windows of the early morning return hydrofoil at the land chips of the outlying islands, haloed in a permanent haze-made rainbow. Wrong, as well, to dwell too long upon it. Harry had made his ultimatum clear enough, so it was ridiculous for either of them to imagine their relationship remaining as it had been, no matter how many different ways Harry said it was nothing personal and Charlie assured him there were no hard feelings. If Harry blew the whistle on him to the Americans, it was going to be very personal indeed and his feelings were going to be hard, fucking hard. And they both knew it.
There were other far more immediate considerations. Like keeping ahead of a mob-handed CIA squad now backed by some sort of military presence on a colony all too easily sealed. And placating a nervously demanding woman who knew very well things had gone disastrously wrong, despite the lies he tried to make sound convincing. And most important of all, at this moment, conning his way into one of the most secret spy installations maintained by Britain.
The hydrofoil edged alongside the pier from which he’d left just a few hours earlier, and Charlie slotted himself into the main body of departing passengers, instinctively using them as cover. He ignored the waiting taxis, walking instead towards the clustered-together Connaught Centre and Chartered Bank and the Landmark complex, giant trees that man made. Tiredness carried the usual ache from his feet into his legs and Charlie envied the people around him who’d slept the previous night. Further to clear his trail he detoured off the main highway several times, moving through side alleys where he could be more aware of people around him; outside several shops incense sticks burned from tiny holders to fend off evil spirits, and Charlie hoped the protection extended to passers-by who needed it, like he did.